Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/621

 vi JOHANNES VERMEER 597 Paillet, Paris, 1818 (460 francs). Duchesse de Berry, Paris, April 4, 1837, No. 76 (405 francs) as a Ter Borch. In the Dufour collection, Marseilles. Sale. Secretan, Paris, July I, 1889, No. 139 (75,000 francs). In the collection of A. Paulovtsof, St. Petersburg. In the possession of the dealers Sulley and Co., London, 1905. Now in the collection of James Simon, Berlin. 34. A GIRL READING A LETTER. B. 31 ; H. 34. A young girl in a greenish -yellow bodice stands facing left at an open window. She is reading a letter which she holds in both hands. In the foreground is a table with a coloured cloth ; on it is a dish of fruit. Above the window to the left hangs a red curtain which is caught up on the casement. To the right is a light green curtain suspended from a rod running across the top of the picture j it creates the illusion of a curtain hung in front of the picture to shade it from the light. The girl's head and shoulders are partly reflected in the window casement which is thrown back against the wall. The paint shows thick spots of varying size. The light falls somewhat too strongly on the green curtain and thus weakens the effect of the picture as a whole. [Compare 31.] Faint traces of a signature may be seen to the right behind the girl j canvas, 33 inches by 25^ inches. Described by Waagen, ii. 26 ; and by Parthey, ii. 98. Alleged replicas, probably copies, appeared in the sales of T. Zschille, Cologne, May 27, 1889, No. 63 (380 marks, Noetzlin of Elberfeld) ; and of Countess Reigersberg, Cologne, October 15, 1890, No. 170. Purchased by De Brais from Paris, in 1764, for the Dresden Gallery. In the Dresden inventory it was successively described as in Rembrandt's manner, as by Rembrandt, by P. de Hooch. In 1783 it was engraved as a Flinck. Since 1862 it has been catalogued as a J. Vermeer. Now in the Picture Gallery, Dresden, 1905 catalogue, No. 1336. 35. THE LOVE-LETTER. See B. 8 and 40 A ; H. 44. In the left-hand corner of a room a young lady sits writing a letter at a table covered with a red cloth. She faces the spectator, and wears a cap and a low-cut bodice with short sleeves. Behind her to the left stands a maid- servant, also facing the spectator ; this woman, who waits to take the letter, has folded her arms and is looking out of the window to the left, which has a thin curtain. On the wall behind the lady is a large picture cut off by the frame ; it apparently represents the finding of Aloses ; there is a group of women bathing to the left in front of bushes with a distant view; in the centre is a woman with her breasts bare, who shows a child to another woman, while to the left is a nude woman seated with her back to the spectator. The same picture occurs in the Rothschild " Astronomer" in Paris (6), but is distinctly smaller in that work. In the window to the left is a coat of arms which is no longer legible. The leading of the glass is somewhat similar in pattern to that of the window in the "Young Woman with a Water-jug " in New York (19), in the pictures at Brunswick (38), Berlin (37), and Windsor Castle (28). In the left foreground part of a large curtain is visible.